Building Backwards

This is kind of longer, and might not completely make sense to anyone but me . . .

Today I was talking with the wood duck, and he mentioned that physics—string theory and all its ilk—is easier to understand than social agendas. Now, in my mind, physics is about as impenetrable as it gets, so I had to defend the nuances of sociality, despite how tangled they can become.

“All you really need to know is what everybody wants,” I said, “and everything else follows after. If you can burrow down to a person’s motives, everything they do makes sense. Nothing to it.” Even less to it when I realized what I was really saying.

One of the first things a writer has to do with a character is determine what the character wants, what drives that person. After that, plot becomes simply a matter of obtaining what that character wants, plus a few obstacles thrown in the way. Any complicated situations that arise can be reduced to a question of conflicting desires. So, in essence, understanding people and social dynamics is just a matter of constructing characters in reverse. Instead of building a person from nothing, you are given a fully developed cast. You watch a few situations, you see how people react, you talk to them a little, and you start to dig down to what it is that they want, be it on a grand scale or not.

My thoughts kept moving along while my mouth logick-ed the wood duck into complacence, and I was allowed another insight as to why I am so unenthused about going to college. I have been with the same cast of characters for years. A good portion of the characters in my life have been around me as far back as my memory reaches. Slowly, the cast has grown, and changed composition, but always I had a base to work with. I had characters that helped me explore the minds, motives, and emotions of others. Every scene change left me with roughly the same people, and a change of scene doesn’t throw me off all that much when the people are the same.

I’m quite good at understanding the current cast that touches on my life. It isn’t difficult for me to accept and comprehend what is going on, why, and how I should deal with it—if I should deal with it at all. It is a rare enough thing that I know every detail of what is going on with my acquaintances: I’m not in tune with the local gossip (not that I’m upset about that; people skew things too much). But because I know people, when I hear about snatches of situations, when I latch onto fragments of gossip, I can generally puzzle out the details myself. I don’t need to know what’s going on, because I understand the people that are involved.

That is why I don’t like the idea of college.

More than anything else, I fear a change in my cast. Right now, even if everything isn’t perfect, it at least makes sense. When I move on to college, I will only be taking a small part of my former cast with me. With the current state of affairs, I will have hardly any of my time-tested characters to help me understand things. And when I don’t understand things…well, suffice to say that I don’t do well when I’m confused.

The second I get to college, I’m going to have to do some NaNoWriMo-pace character exploration, or I’m in big trouble.

Benefit of the Doubt

I've been thinking over the past few days, and I've come to a realization:

Very few people believe in the benefit of the doubt.

Not to sound high and mighty, but I seem to always be the one shoving in comments that make people look at things from another person's point of view. I think this is strange, because I've never thought of myself as the most understanding or forgiving person (most times, if I forgive you, it's 'cause I have to look at you on a daily basis). I still don't think I am. I think there are just things that have happened to me that force me to give people the benefit of the doubt, whether they deserve it or not, or whether their circumstances are anything similar to mine or not.

That's fine, that's great, I learned my lesson the hard way (which sucked, by the way). But why can't other people just give others a little leeway? Why do they make the assumption that because someone isn't perfect, they aren't trying their hardest? Why do they decide that just because someone has screwed up time and time again, they are worth detesting with every fiber of their soul? What gives any of us the right to hate our spirit brothers and sisters because they aren't as perfect as we'd like them to be? What if everyone hated me because I tend to be tactless and say things I don't necessarily mean? What if everyone despised me because I tend to correct a lot of the things they say, whether I'm serious about it or not? Some people can forgive me those trespasses, but they can't forgive someone being flamoyant by nature, or passive by nature. Why?

I don't know, maybe this all boils down to a "why can't we be friends?" issue, but it's been bothering me recently.

Listen to the Whistle

Today at water polo, my face more or less got bashed in. My upper jaw and nearly my entire nose are still tingly, and I got hit almost two hours ago. Now, I wouldn't have a problem with this if it was my fault, or if it had happened in the regular course of the game.

HOWEVER, it was not my fault, nor was it part of the game. The person who hit me was doing a full-force back-handed shot. Thus, she could not see where she was shooting. Admitedly, I was in the way, but here's the catch. I know how not to get hurt while blocking a backhand. I've been taught how, and self-preservation has nearly perfected my methods. I was in the way because our coach had blown the whistle: the play was over. So I stopped in mid-motion and stayed in the way. My teammate decided to take the shot anyway.

Because what she did was in ignorance of the position she is playing, I didn't get particularly mad at her. She could tell she hurt me, because I kept my hand over the injured area for a few minutes and it was a few more before I really got back in the game. I explained gently that when the play is over, it's over, but I'm not sure she got the picture. I tried not to let her see just how badly she'd hurt me, because she felt pretty bad anyway and she would have felt awful. But a couple of teammates noticed that I kept fingering my teeth and my nose whenever her back was turned.

I just hope it doesn't hurt tomorrow.